Introduction
Ethnomedicine can be defined as the field of study that deals with medicinal traditions, ideas, and practices as it relates to the cultural perspectives of the people around the world. Ethnomedicine is a wide field of science; it encompasses fields of studies such as ecology, environmental history, and epidemiology. Since these fields indirectly affect the culture of people, they can be then considered crucial to ethnomedicine as a field of knowledge (Giovannini, n.d.) However, ethnomedicine is seen as a niche field in medicine and as such not widely known among the medicinal field. Recognizing the benefits of biomedicine is essential to overcome this issue.
The ideas that are gathered in the field of ethnomedicine can be used to improve the study of medicine in general. The cultural practices can be utilized to improve preexisting medical notions, and can be used to discover new areas in the field of medicine. Therefore, there is a need to explore this field and further refine it so that its usefulness can be utilized.
Ethnomedicine and General Medicine
. Until recent years, ethnomedicine has been largely ignored by the medical community because the practices and its beliefs are largely unexplored—at least by the general scientific community. For one, the plants used in traditional healing have their effects, composition, dosage, and toxicity not given major research. Secondly, the cultural practices are not what the community sees as a valid scientific method and thus have their results proven as inconclusive and unreliable. Another reason is that the discarding the notion of traditional medicine is largely seen as a development of nations and civilization in general. This ethnocentric belief prompts people to do away with traditional medicine among cultures in various countries.
However, once the scientific community has begun to recognize ethnomedicine as a legitimate field of study, the medical community has seen a lot of improvements in general. For example, medicinal plants that were once seen as belonging to ethnomedicinal practices are now used in manufacturing medicine. Therefore, ethnomedicine can be used hand-in-hand along with general medicine in order to make important breakthroughs in the scientific field, and to discover the world of health further (Williams, 2006).
Benefits of Ethnomedicine
Another potential benefit of ethnomedicine is that it can be used in lieu of an organized health care system, especially in hard-to-reach places where commercial medical service can prove to be unavailable. This is related to the above reason—since people are more familiar with traditional medicine, they may come to trust ethnomedicine more than any conventional health care facility. Therefore, medical attention can be given to the patients who need it the most even though there is no access to these places (Carrier & Mathiez-Siefel, 2008).
Lastly, the knowledge gained from ethnomedicine can be used to improve existing ideas and theories in the field of medicine in general. For example, the knowledge that traditional medicine specialists possess can be of great help in matters such as manufacturing and discovery of drugs that are used to heal certain conditions and diseases.
Using Ethnomedicine to Improve General Medicine
Among these benefits, focus will be given on the role of ethnomedicine as a means to improve existing knowledge regarding modern medicine. For one, research can be conducted on the various pharmacopeia in ethnomedicine in order to determine what substances they possess that are used to treat diseases. Such research can also identify potential hazards that are associated with using such products, and how they can be eliminated in order to introduce these drugs at a safe level.
In addition to scientific research, surveys can be done on the local practitioners in order to collect data about the practices and the instruments they used. This information can then be adapted by scientific communities in order to be recognized by the medical world in general.
Conclusion
Ethnomedicine refers to traditional medicine, the medicine that is seen in cultural perspective as opposed to general medicine, the organized field recognized by the scientific method in general. Even though ethnomedicine can benefit general medicine greatly, it is still seen as an unconventional branch of medicine and therefore it is largely unexplored. In order to overcome this, the benefits of ethnomedicine to general medicine can be explored. One such benefit is that it can provide essential knowledge to the medicinal field. Research, then, must be done regarding practices in ethnomedicine that can be of use to biomedicine in general.
References
Benefits of Ethnomedicine. (2013, July 1). Retrieved from http://blogs.elon.edu/soc376ol/?p=2550
Cuerrier, A., & Mathez-Siefel, S. (2008). Editorial: Ethnomedicine in the Contemporary World. Retrieved from http://www.ethnobiology.net/editorial-ethnomedicine-contemporary-world/
Giovannini, P. (n.d.). Ethnomedicine: Introduction and overview. Retrieved from http://petergiovannini.com/what-is-ethnomedicine-definition-introduction-Williams, L. D. (2008). Ethnomedicine. Retrieved from https://www.monroecollege.edu/uploadedFiles/_Site_Assets/PDF/Ethnomedicine.pdf overview.html
